It might be fun to make leveling really hard again. You guys might not have noticed but there is something you should really know about this.

Eat Me, Drink Me, regeneration and protection monster pots, and surges are papering over some balance issues we have in the low and mid levels right now. I don't think it would be wise to suddenly make leveling hard again, because it would expose a lot of serious issues with niche PK. I think it would not be very fun if we reverted some of those changes now.

You should also know that as the amount of character investment increases, the amount of damage a PK does to a player increases a great deal. Right now if you get killed at level 35 or 40 it's not really all that big a deal. If it was like old times again and took groups of 3 some hard core keyboard pounding to get to 50, it would take a lot longer to get to 35 or 40 and the PKs that happen there would mean a lot more. Since we have fewer players now, there won't be as much of a chance for you guys to gain PK skill at level 15 or 25 as there was when leveling was hard. Newbies are going to get to the 30s and then get mercilessly pk'd.

If this is something you guys think is a problem and we decide to tackle it, we'll have to put it on the road map and make gradual changes to make ranking more difficult again.

I can tell you what though, I would have more fun myself if it was a lot harder to level.

There are some mitigating factors that make it not so bad, like pets being able to freely group and invokers being able to sustain. Those changes take a lot of the edge off leveling the most difficult classes. It might be fun to see that matter more than surges and cakes.

if we make a change we should sync it with druids opening so the druids all have the tough gauntlet

i just meant the cakes and drinks the surges n pots are good. the cakes n drinks is how ppl get blasted to pinnacle at least with the other methods there is still a window of "oh just a few more lvls!' and it always seemed weird to me shrinkin lvls to help others out isnt that in itself breaking some fourth wall in the realm of Thera?

but lemme tell u i agree dont change it just b/c im flappin my gums, but lemme also say this. I use to be one to delete over first death but i grew out of it, i thi k its the person making the choice influenced by rng

to me the quick 50 with cakes is like a finish without the race, like what even is the point if ur just going to burn thru chars all the time but if thats what ppl want have at it mates ;<

If the player base gets decent i wouldn't mind making it more difficult. It would suck for me if you log in and see 1 player online, nobody to rank with then you log out. You wait a week and oh, finally a group. Then because it is more difficult you rank 8 levels. Then oh shit. Back to 1 week of waiting and hoping.

Most race class combos can solo rank without monster pots. It sucks ballz but you can do it.

I think the ranking issue is this: because people are so used to getting 1200xp per kill in groups of three with rewards/surges, they use that as their baseline and assume the 80-200xp per kill grind is not worth their time whether it's solo or with one other group member.

Removing monster pots and potions/cakes would be an easy A/B test. It would not be too difficult and I would say not harmful to do two weeks on, two weeks off of monster pots and cakes. If anything clerics would get a boost from off-potion weeks._________________

Personally I think the monster potions are good and fine. Eventually you just run into mobs that hit way to hard and you're going to need some sort of aura/healing if you are solo ranking(especially depending on your race/class). I've always felt pretty MEH about the cakes and potions. While I haven't completely solo leveled a class, I have gotten it solo to 42 more then quick enough to group with the 50's.

I've never liked the eat me/drink me stuff. The only benefit I see from it is when someone like a helpful mystic lowering levels to help a newbie do some leveling or showing them areas to grab some common equipment. I've seen Goron/Varliv do this alot before.

Other then that I think it encourages alot of bullshit OOC perma-groups. Don't need to be an Imm to see which people are perma-grouped. Also it really accelerates the ranking a bit too much, people getting to 50 in less then 10 hours is just pretty retarded. I think that definitely is one of the reasons the turnover at level 50 is so high and the fact alot of people don't really care about their characters, as they can easily just flip and rank another one.

With the monster pots, learning boosts, you can really adequately solo train/rank a very decent character with almost all popular race/class combos quite easily. You reach a very decently trained character at the end, and it is still really fast imo.

You can argue that newbies get a bit more margin of error pking at 50, being more balanced and having just more health but I think it really deters people from improving when they get spanked by a couple of vets in 5 rounds when they haven't even learned how to use half their skills appropriately.

this is just a silly conversation to me. it benefits absolutely no one. this change will not make anyone's game play any better but will hinder some... so you want to make a change that doesn't do good. but bad. I don't understand that's all. this won't make.me want to hold onto my characters longer I gaurantee. but it will make me less and less likely to roll another when I do delete, the harder it gets to level

The only thing you can do on 25 is train and have overly unbalanced PK experience.

I absolutely loathe the idea of grinding exp in this game, simply because it SHOULD NOT be about levels, but the RP and PK.

I don't see anything wrong about blasting to 50 in less than 10 hours. 10 hours is still a lot of time to spend from your REAL LIFE, hours that you never get back in your life. Ten hours simply to do something utterly mindless, like killing same mobs over and over again.

Exping should NOT be the focus of the game, AT ALL.

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RP is what makes this otherwise "average" (when it comes to countless of other ROM derivations) mud stand out/be playable in the first place.

Levelling with the current playerbase is a nuisance. It stops a lot of people from rolling more interesting chars. Even if they are a flash in the pan and don't work out as planned, then at least hey, people can try different ideas/approaches as they develop their RP.

TL;DR In a RP-enforced, PK-focused mud, levelling should be the least of priorities when DEVELOPING a char. RP should be developing your char, not endlessly killing same mobs over and over again.

Not that it matters, but I have openly admitted to what I did and never denied it. Yes I used a cell phone to create a char and rank my main. What I did not do is rank an illusionist and monk to level 50, get a bunch of rares, auction them for 10 minutes then log in with Duneran a level 25 fire warrior and buy them all. But yes Ranix and I do love each other I am sorry you are jealous of our relationship. No soup for you

The auto-mania is terrible... It honestly makes me not want to play a berserker... All of a sudden losing the ability to relax (and therefore not able to flee, quaff a potion, anything) is too detrimental. You're already rolling the dice on relax working when you want it to, any chance this can get changed?